The farm pedaler

From the January, 2007 issue
Filed under: Interviews, Youth Articles

An interview with cross-country cyclist and food lover Justin Ellis

by CAT Students David Baker, Isaiah Fine and Ben Cox

Justin Ellis at Skinner City Farm in EugeneA few months ago, we got an email from a guy named Justin Ellis who said he was on an epic adventure to discover where his food came from by visiting farms across the country on his bike. The students at the Center for Appropriate Transport (CAT) were immediately interested because here was a guy who was interested in the same things they were: bikes and food! When Justin found his way to the southern Willamette valley, he dropped by CAT to chat about his trip, which he describes as “a bicycle journey in search of what individuals, communities, farmers, states, and the nation are doing to preserve and protect America’s farms and farmland.

Why did you start your tour?
Well, I was curious about two things: I wanted to learn about where food came from and I wanted to learn that by seeing the farms that produce the food and by seeing the differences between the farms and their practices around the country. I’m also interested in what’s going to keep these farms viable in the future, so I wanted to have an opportunity to meet with farmers and see how they live and what challenges they are facing in being able to continue farming successfully. There are economic challenges, in to what degree their local communities support agriculture; pressures on land and the cost of land; and pressures to sell land for nonagricultural uses. So I thought the whole question could be answered by visiting the farms directly, and I thought it would be more interesting to visit them by bicycle rather than driving around to see them.

How long did it take you to do all that?
I started the trip on June 10, so I’ve been on the road a little over 4 1/2 months. I have gone about 4500 miles, started in Virginia and went straight west from Virginia through 10 states, and I’m almost finished. I’ll be finishing up in the next few weeks, so it will be almost a five-month trip.

Why start in Virginia?
I wanted to do a coast-to-coast trip, so there are a lot of states to start in out on the Atlantic coast. But one of the reasons I started in Virginia is because I mainly went through states that I hadn’t spent much time in. I could have started from Georgia or Alabama, the 2 states I’ve lived most of my life in, but I really wanted to learn about parts of the country I’d never been to before. So Virginia was a state that I was really interested in. There’s a lot of history there, and it ended up being a really good choice for beginning the trip because our country has a real tradition of an agrarian vision for our nation. Thomas Jefferson was one of those visionaries who really advocated an agrarian economy as being the most productive for a healthy democracy because of all those values that farmers gain of independent thinking and so on. He felt you were most in communion with the creator through a direct relationship with nature and that it taught you things you couldn’t learn from a life in manufacturing. These were things I didn’t think about when I started, but beginning the trip in Virginia and exploring that history gave me a lot of perspective on some of those broader values of agriculture.

How much food did you bring on your trip?
Daily food plans are probably the most routine part of the trip. You have to refuel every day. I only carry about 2-3 days worth of food at any time, so I’m always picking up new food on the way. That’s probably been one of the best benefits of going farm to farm across the country: I’m getting a lot of good fresh food and I’m able to see where it’s coming from. That was one of the things I wanted to learn about—where my food came from. I have eaten more food these last few months where I’ve been able to actually see where it had been produced than I have at any other time in my life. so that said, when I haven’t been on a farm for a few days—and they aren’t always able to stock me up well—I do have to go to the grocery store like anyone else. That’s when I stock up on lots of protein in the form of nuts: peanuts, cashews peanut butter; and then lots of dried fruits, oatmeal, things like that. Pretty simple diet most of the time, but it’s fun to mix vegetables, and I’ve had a lot of grass-fed beef and pork and things like that, so it’s been great.

Did you ever have any problems with your bike on the trip?
That’s a question that I hate when people ask because I’ve had a couple of really tragic accidents. One of them was totally my fault, too. this will be a good lesson for anyone who rides a bike, not just bike tourers. When I was in Illinois, I had a bandanna I would use to wipe the sweat off my brow. This was back in July and it was really hot. I kept that bandanna in my front handlebar bag and I don’t know how it happened, but somehow that bandanna leapt out of the bag and jumped directly into my chain. The chain then sucked it up and it locked up the derailleur. I was going about 20 miles an hour at the time, and when your derailleur quits spinning, the bike stops flush. The violent stop ripped the derailleur from the frame, and it actually bent the hanger for the derailleur. Now sometimes you can fix a hanger, but this one was bent at a 90 degree angle and it even stripped where the derailleur screws in. So I had to call the manufacturer of the frame and tell them I had destroyed it. I even sent them a picture and they said, “you did, you destroyed it—it can’t be fixed.” so luckily, because I’m doing this trip for a good cause, they overnighted me a new frame so I didn’t have to buy a new one and a disaster was averted. So that was the first disaster. The only other big problem I had wasn’t that big a problem, it was just where I was at the time. This will be a good reason for people to always keep a chain protector on their rear wheel. My chain jumped off of the cog into the spokes as I was climbing a hill on a snowy day in Yellowstone. I had about 60 miles to go that day, and I was in the middle of nowhere. It broke one spoke but it bent about 9 others and so the stability of that wheel was greatly damaged—but it didn’t throw it out of true, so I rode on it for the rest of the day. I had to loosen the brakes a little bit, and I was looking at the potential to have to buy a new wheel because if you bend up that many spokes, you’ve probably messed it up pretty good. I happened to find a guy in west Yellowstone who had spent his whole life repairing wheels. He looked at it and said, “oh yeah, I can repair that no problem,” and in about 20 minutes he had put all new spokes on it and trued it up perfectly. I think he only charged me 19 dollars for the repair. So those are the only two disaster stories I had, both of them I was very lucky to make out as painlessly as I did.

Now that your tour is almost over are you going to ride your bike all the way back?
No, because its winter. I thought about it, but if I wanted to do a round trip, I’d have to go down to San Diego, California and then backpack across Texas. But I think 4 1/2 months is probably long enough! So I’m packing the bike up and UPSing it back home, and then I’ll be flying out of Portland in about two weeks now.

You can find out more about Justin Ellis and the Farmland Conservation Tour at www.farmlandconservation.org. The interview we conducted will be featured on the next podcast from the Kids of CAT. Our first three podcasts are available at www.catoregon.org/chainlinks.

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